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Not a profound thought at all, but: I can't sleep! sad

My throat is burning like a fire, and it hurts so bad that I cannot relax enough to sleep ... sad I wonder if Ibuprofen would help. It would definitely at least make the fever go down. My throat is so swollen right now. I should do something productive with this time, or at the very least, something that will distract me ... write poetry? I'm so out of practice that the poetry I write really sucks these days. I seem to write better poetry when I'm sad. I'm very happy right now. ^_^ heart Sometimes I can write half-way decent poetry when I'm happy, but I'm so rusty at poetry writing that nothing is working out in my few recent attempts at poetry. I might just write a few random lines and phrases here. Maybe song lyrics? Hmm ... I'm going to listen to "Ask Me" by Amy Grant and "Damaged" by Plumb to try and send me back for awhile to the emotions that I need to access. Writing those songs is going to mean needing to look at some very old feelings that were really awful. I might even need to kind of send myself back to a bad place to write the songs, but it's for a good cause. Oddly, I'm wondering if I can even access those feelings anymore. There are only a few things in recent years which have brought some of them back, so they are a dim memory now. Am I fit to write these songs anymore now that the emotions are mostly nothing more than a memory? I wonder ...

The only thing recent that has brought anything like those feelings again is when scary men in their 50s hit on me on the bus ... that makes me want to go home and crawl under blankets and not come out and scrub my skin raw ... Last year, there was a night that I was feeling really traumatized after such an experience. I might be able to connect to some of the feelings that way by remembering those more recent emotions.

Maybe I don't need to re-experience the emotions, myself, but instead to remember the types of emotions I felt and write the emotions from my memories of them? As awful as it would be to deeply re-connect with the old fears, I'm pretty sure that what I write would be more powerful and healing if I did. Can you send yourself back in time in your mind and then come forward safely without the pain of the past still upon you? I'll think about the girl I was and how she felt, what she was ashamed and afraid of, try to remember her and step into her feelings for a little bit. But I don't want to stay there! I left a long time ago, and I am pretty much okay now, though a few fears still remain ...

I decided to dive into my old self's feelings and it gets pretty intense as it goes along. It's probably pretty hard to read. It was hard to write:

how I felt in my room at night (already have parts of a song about that)

the way that I thought other people saw me afterwards - I thought that people would know just by looking at me

the inner isolation, the lack of ability to trust

the fear in the midst of the abuse experiences

shame ... so much shame ...

skin ... no touch ...
hiding
such long showers
always washing my hands so much
staying in my room to be safe because, for a long time, no one else knew and I had to protect myself
the way that they looked at me like predatory creatures that wanted to devour me
"I'll just live as if it never happened," I would chant in my mind. That didn't mean being whole - it was about denial.
remembering what happened to Josh still makes me feel awful - that man ... *fights urge to commit murder*
don't touch me, don't hug me, don't look at me ... don't look too closely into my eyes and see my secret there
would only wear clothes that were not very fitted after that - only loose clothes that didn't fit too close to my body, didn't even hint at the form of my physical shape
my doll that I hugged to my chest as if she could protect me
my parents must never find out ... what would they think of me?
I am dirty ... someone will find out ... what they have done to me makes me nothing more than a prostitute ... I will be punished if my parents find out, I am sure
I just want to have fun and play with other kids outside and not ever, ever think about what happened
I can't go outside anymore because that's where they are, all 6 of them
watching me, talking in low voices, whispering, laughing
the other girls seem to know - how do they know?! They want to talk to me about it ... I'd rather die - they will rebuke me for this horrible shame, they will tell me that I am dirty, that I am a whore
home at night, the lights are off and I am afraid, could the monsters who hurt me come to get me through that window? It's so big and there is a tree nearby ...


the abuse:
all the children are playing hide and seek outside on a Friday night and they ask me to hide with them ... they follow me and I can't get away from them ... I don't like what they're doing and they follow me. I just wanted to play outside with the other kids too. He is so frightening ... he is very tall and thin with long fingers - horrible hands, I am so afraid of him, more than the others, and I don't remember why ... He is the most frightening of them all and I'm not sure why - did he do something else to me that I can't remember - something more than just touching me in horrible ways? I can't go outside and play anymore ... my parents ask me why I won't go outside anymore and I am terrified that they will find out or that maybe they already have
what is happening, what are they doing to me? I can't get away from them, they always follow me. I hate it, I am frightened.
He is the one I fear the most. I still tremble in fear when I think of him. His hands were so awful. I am frightened. Is he ... what is he doing ... I feel almost as if there's something I don't quite remember ... why was he worse? Was it just because he was so much taller than me?
is he the one that told the others about it? is he the one that told them: "That girl must be loose, because she let me do this (_description_)"
I was 8? 9? I can't remember for sure now. He was 15? 16?
It happened for a long time (many Friday nights, many weeks?), because I always thought I could get away from them, and I just wanted to play outside and have fun.
Somehow, I finally concluded that there was no way to get away from them and it would just keep happening if I kept going out to play hide and seek with the other 20 or so children who would come to play games on Friday nights.
He was my monster, the worst of them all ... why? It must just have been because he was so tall - I think I'd remember if something else happened, but I'm not sure. I am frightened, even today, that there might be other memories buried that are so horrible that I can't remember them today - if there are such memories, if he raped me - will I remember? I don't want to remember. Remembering his hands is more than scary enough for me - I don't want to remember that either.
My first boyfriend (when I was 20) was very tall and very, very thin with long thin hands and long thin fingers. One day, I was horrified to realize that even his face bears a slight resemblance to the worst of my monsters ...


Many years later (I never said any of these things outloud - it would hurt him very much) :
Dad, why aren't you showing me your anger? You should have yelled in front of me that you wanted to hurt them really bad, told me about the things you wished you could do to them, told me that it was really hard to keep from doing those things. Did you yell, did you cry when Mom told you about it all those years ago? So, when we finally talked about it, there was nothing left but a sort of weary regret for what happened. I worry and hope that you did not feel guilty about what they did to me ... I didn't tell you, so there was no way you could have known and protected me ... I love you, Dad ... don't be sad about it, don't be depressed and withdraw from talking to me ...


And back again:
changes ... things happening to me ... now I am more vulnerable. The things that they could do to me would be more frightening, they could steal me away and force me to marry them - that happens sometimes there ... and there's nothing that the girl can do ...
my body is so much more vulnerable now, I cross my arms in front of my chest, I sit inside my room in the afternoons, watching the other children playing in the field near our house, staring out through tiny slits in the venetian blinds which are closed so that I feel safe, so that they can't see me
they are there too
horrible smiles on their faces, the laughter ... some of them live in the house next door
there were 6 of them, 3 pairs of brothers - they must have told each other ...
was I a prize they thought they could claim, an exotic creature, with my fair skin and hair?
everyone always telling me I was a pretty child, is that why they did it?
the stories the people told about spirits of the dead with their awful hands and eyes blurred in my mind with the things that my flesh and blood monsters, they were far more frightening than any dead creature that might come to hurt me


11 years old
my heart is very dead inside, as much as any of the spirits & monsters from the spirit folk tales - the poison touch of my "monsters" has worked its way very far into my soul ...
my eyes are shadowed with fear and the shame of what those boys did to me
people ask me what is wrong, my parents, my friends, but I won't tell them - the abuse stopped when I was 9, after I stopped going outside, but when those boys look at me like that, I feel like it is happening again
My mom has had "the facts of life" talk with me, but there were things I already knew
I won't go outside because my body is different now and they could hurt me so much worse now ... they could do much worse things that could leave me with horrible consequences ... I want to still be a little girl, but I can't anymore. I stay inside where I am safe. I read alot. I read Jane Eyre, books by L.M.Montgomery, Gone With The Wind. These women are strong. I want to be like Anne from the Anne of Green Gables books. They are like older sisters to me, my role models - and I look up to them, these women of long ago. They were unconventional for their age in a time when women didn't have a lot of freedom, some were writers inspite of it not being considered the most respectable occupation for a woman.


more about 11 years old:
I really did feel dead
I wanted to die, that was when I began to feel that way
after I was back on the shore, out of the riptide - eventually I come to wish that I had given up and drowned that day
people look at me, their eyes are probing, they want to know what is wrong
Lisa figured it out. She asks me why I won't wear the blue and white dress that is tailored and fits well and not loosely. She says it is very beautiful, and it is. It hangs on the back of my door and I want to wear it ... but I can't ...
when I won't tell her, she threatens that she will not be my friend anymore if I don't tell her
I tell her, she is the first person who has ever heard of what happened to me
she says that I must tell my parents but I refuse
she says that she will tell them if I won't - I beg her not to, but she does it anyway ... (today I think: "thank God for her" ...)
she knows now, but we don't talk about it except for the time she tells me it almost happened to her too
the conversation with my mother is awful ... she asks me questions I don't want to answer
she tells me what happened to her as a little girl and I am horrified - now I know that people all over the world do this horrible thing, so I do not hate the Filipino people - Americans do it too, and I think that her monster, a middle-aged white man is much scarier. Years later, I find out that her monster was her biological father, and I am even more horrified ...


16
back in America - I hate it here, I don't want to ever go back to the island where those boys were, but I do want to go back to Nasuli where I was safe. Nasuli is home.
some *expletive* guy in gym class stares at my chest which apparently is ... less ... than hormone-laced milk drinking girls of America - he asks me if I've gone through puberty yet. I am horrified and ashamed that he was looking at me that way - is my white t-shirt too thin or something? looking at me ... I am frightened, too frightened to even feel that his words meant I am undesireable. Years later, his words haunt me too, along with the words of other guys who said horrible things.
I become severely depressed about school, thinking that I will fail because I didn't do well in science. I picture how bleak my life could be ... I decide to kill myself and almost go through with it.


late 20s:
I feel the desires of a woman, playful even in those feelings (though I do not act on them)
but I am confused & sometimes I feel ashamed when I think of ever being that way
but I still feel a grown woman's emotions, I feel desire
but I feel some shame - would I be afraid someday?
I wonder what will happen if/when I get married someday - will I be like those women who are immobilized with fear? I was like that once ... my first boyfriend when I was 20 should have known better than to touch me like that ... I was afraid, and it reminded me of those boys ... No one else that I date will ever touch me like that again.
I don't know what to do with my mixed emotions.
I'm really alright, actually, but there is a bit of discomfort and shame mixed in with the thought of things that could happen if/when I get married someday that I think comes from what happened long ago.

but even today, the hands of my worst "monster" and of my first boyfriend from when I was 20 years old blur in my mind and I am frightened when I think of how what they did to me was exactly the same, and how I didn't want it to happen and didn't know what to do to make it stop

Will the future remind me of their hands? I am afraid, even all these years later, when I ask myself that question - no one has touched me like that in many years. I am very glad of that, and I feel safer now.